Because, he suspected, no man had given her a release like that. He probably shouldn’t have, but her animosity had been eating at him. That remark about buying women and her resistance toward him on every level had been grinding away at his control. When she had called herself “cheap” for wanting to sleep with him, something feral in him had snapped, demanding that he show her how good they would be together.
Cheap? It was unique and precious, beyond even what he had imagined it could be. Disconcertingly powerful.
And honest.
Her reaction now, so taken aback by her own abandonment, told him how thoroughly he had owned her in those moments. He thrilled to it, but it caused a shift inside him. Something he wasn’t fully prepared to examine, fearing he was making a rationalization to justify getting what he wanted: her.
But the way she’d ignited in his arms made thinking of anything except possessing her impossible.
* * *
They seemed to have left the paparazzi far behind and circled back toward the house. As soon as they were inside, Gwyn went straight through to the small patio outside the back door, where the cool afternoon breeze off the water gave her the first proper breath she’d taken since coming apart at Vito’s touch.
She went down the steps to the pool deck where she stared out over the lake, blood cooling, hands curled around the rail to ground her back into harsh reality. Why had she let that happen? And what did it mean for the rest of this pantomime they were acting? Would they become lovers in every way, not just a one-sided grope that only proved his superiority over her?
That was the part that devastated her. She could give herself orgasms if she wanted them. But despite all the ways he’d turned out to be different from the urbane Italian gentleman she’d fantasized about, she was even more in thrall than ever. Would she become his lover?
She couldn’t imagine finding the will to say, No.
Vito came outside with two wineglasses and a corked bottle. He wordlessly poured and offered her one, not speaking until she took hers.
“Salute,” he said, gaze trying to catch hers.
She couldn’t do it, too aware of how intimate things had been between them. Too vulnerable to him.
“I keep making you angry because it seems the only way to keep you from falling into despair,” he said, as though explaining the answer to a riddle.
“Something else for my own good?” She snapped her gaze up to his.
He smiled faintly. “Whatever works.”
She released a shaken sigh, finding his statement not exactly comforting, but oddly bolstering. He wasn’t toying with her for fun, but trying to help her in his backhanded way.
She couldn’t deny that his lovemaking had, for a few minutes, completely wiped away her anxiety over her nightmare of a life. Now everything was flooding back and she would be very thankful if he did something annoying. Despair hovered like a rain cloud looking to move in and burst over her.
He set his glass on a table and shrugged out of his new jacket, a vintage cut in light wool with leather patches at the shoulders. It was gorgeous on him, very debonair, but the dove-colored shirt beneath was equally smart, clinging to his muscled shoulders, buttons open in a V that showed his throat and collarbone and a few dark chest hairs.
He slung the jacket negligently over the back of the nearest chair, attention shifting to his phone. With a flick of his thumb across the screen, he paraphrased from something he was reading. “The spa is claiming they had no knowledge of the photos, but the press has found the same connection my team discovered this morning. Your masseuse is related to one of Jensen’s employees. I’ll take you to lodge a formal complaint with the police when we return to Milan so they can look at pressing charges for invasion of privacy.”
“Charging the masseuse doesn’t put the blame on Kevin, though, does it?”
“He has worked very hard to keep his hands clean, but we’ll get there. It’s early days yet.” He picked up his glass and sipped, continuing to read his emails.
Days. It hadn’t even been two full ones, but she’d already gone further with him than most of the men she’d dated for months. She was in so much trouble if that was a precursor of what was to come.
Pensively sipping the pale gold of the wine, she wound up exclaiming a very sincere, “Oh, that’s very good!”
Not that she was any sort of connoisseur, but Travis always brought wine when she cooked and he didn’t punish anyone with cheap stuff. She’d been enjoying trying bottles here in Italy and hadn’t found a bad one, but this surpassed anything in her price range.
Vito glanced up, offering what looked like a very genuine smile for a change. “It’s the private reserve from my great-grandparents’ vineyard. One of my cousins runs it and doles the bottles out to family every year. We could make a fortune, but it’s too good to sell.”